March 2009

10th March 2009

Another book arrived recently to add to my shelf-weakeningly huge collection of Merseyrail paraphenalia. Seaport to Seaside (out of print but obtained from a helpful Amazon marketplace seller) charts the history of the Liverpool to Southport and Ormskirk lines from their beginnings in the 1850s right up to the creation of the Merseyrail Northern Line in the late 1970s.

There’s lots of fascinating stuff in there which I wasn’t aware of. For example, when the line from Southport first opened, it only went as far as Waterloo, with passengers left to face a tortuous onward journey into Liverpool by road. (An experience that Merseyrail are trying to replicate every Sunday, judging by their upcoming engineering works page).

What did amuse me was some of the turns of phrase used in the book. It was published in 1981 or thereabouts, but occasionally feels like it was written 50 years earlier — it’s hard to read sentences such as, “telephonic communication is provided between driver and guard” (describing a feature of the new Class 507 trains), without hearing it in the voice of Mr Burns.

I would repeat some of the jokes, but each one lasted about 5 minutes, so it would be impossible. Suffice to say its the funniest programme on the BBC so far this year and you should be watching it. If you missed it I recommend you iPlayer it at the earliest possible opportunity.

The whole show feels very BBC4-ish, and according to the Guardian only attracted 1 million viewers. However, after listening this clip from Radio 4’s Heresy — where he calls 84% of the studio audience idiots — I doubt he’s that bothered about appealing to the mainstream.

23rd March 2009

You can argue till you’re blue in the face about the merits of the Licence Fee, but as long as Chris Moyles reigns at Radio 1, using his position to make juvenile, stupid, bigoted comments, anti-BBC campaigners have a solid counter-argument.

Chris Moyles has been censured by Ofcom for condoning negative stereotypes of gay people, after the DJ made what the media regulator ruled were derogatory comments about Will Young on his BBC Radio 1 breakfast show.

Moyles changed the lyrics of two of Young’s songs, Evergreen and Leave Right Now, and sang them in “an effeminate and high pitched voice”, according to Ofcom.